XLI
The minute he turned onto the vicolo he’d caught sight of the woman at her front door, looking in his direction. “Welcome, Brigadie’,” she had said. “I was expecting you.”
She was expecting him. And it was almost pure chance that he’d come at all.
“You look tired. You must have had a tough day. Come in, sit down. I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” he had replied. “I’m sure I’ll find something to eat at home.”
“I know,” she had said to him. “But just a little snack.”
And the next thing he knew he was sitting at her table, eating a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce, simple, but to him, delicious. And he had told her about his day, about Calise and Iodice, though without naming names. And about Ricciardi, that strange superior officer of his, who worried him as though he were his own son.
Then, without even realizing it, he began talking about Luca, and it dawned on him that that was something he never did. And as he listened to his own words, he felt a sharp stab of familiar pain and he discovered something he already knew: that it was impossible to resign yourself to that loss, and yet life still went on.
Filomena listened to him, her eyes sparkling in the semidarkness of the basso, smiling or shaking her head in dismay. It was nice to be able to talk to her, nice to have her listen.
Gaetano came home and Filomena put food on the table for him as well. A dark, silent young man, but well-mannered and intelligent; Maione could tell from the few words he spoke. Gaetano asked him about his work as a policeman and Maione talked to him with a mixture of frankness and melancholy.
Before he knew it, silence had descended on the vicolo. He pulled out his old pocket watch and discovered, to his surprise, that it was almost eleven o’clock. He stood up to say his farewells, expressing his thanks and adding, without even realizing what he was saying: See you tomorrow. The smile that he received in return glittered in the darkness of night like the moon.
He started for home, his heart half happy, half sad.
Ricciardi was afraid to go home. This too was an unfamiliar sensation; anxiety had taken the place of the yearning for serenity that drove him to his window every night. It was late. Both Iodice’s unexpected act and the pizza he’d eaten with Modo had allowed him to put off this moment. But now that he was climbing uphill toward Via Santa Teresa and toward home, he was afraid that the window across the way would be shuttered. Shutting him out, leaving him in the dark.
He silently cursed the Calise investigation and his job itself for having placed him face-to-face with Enrica and leading him to show her disrespect, however unintentionally. Thus prompting the anger he’d seen in her suddenly compressed lips and the flashing glare behind her eyeglasses. He couldn’t get that picture out of his mind: the tension in her shoulders as she turned her back on him and strode out the door.
Last of all, the thought that she might be unwell tormented him. His naturally analytical mind also entertained the hypothesis that it might be a matter of someone else’s health: a family member’s, a friend’s. How he wished he could speak words of reassurance to her.
But, as his steps echoed across the empty street that ran alongside the construction sites inhabited at this hour only by the dead, he realized that he now thought of her as a woman. Before today, Enrica had been a symbol of a world, a creature from an unreachable planet. Now he could revisualize lips, eyes, flesh, shoulders. As well as hands, a pocketbook, shoes. He could still smell on himself the faint scent of lavender that he had greedily breathed in as she left the office. And the tone of her voice, calm but firm. Suddenly, he was overcome with the desire to look out his window. He went up the steps two at a time.
Enrica had emerged from her bedroom after everyone else had finished eating. She said that she felt a little better now and, with her heart in her mouth, careful not to alter a single gesture, a single expression of her regular routine, she kept looking over at the dark window in the building across the way, always just out of the corner of her eye, with a fleeting glance. Then she turned on the table lamp and, taking a seat in her armchair, went to work on her embroidery.
Nine thirty, a quarter to ten, ten. Every time that the pendulum clock in the dining room chimed the hour, her heart clutched a little tighter in her chest and the anxiety constricted her breathing. Ten fifteen, ten thirty. As she embroidered, she counted to sixty and then totted the minutes. A quarter to eleven. One more minute and then I’ll get up. Now, just another minute. Never, never once in the past year had he been so late coming home. The window looked like a bottomless abyss.
She began putting away her embroidery long after she’d heard the door of her parents’ bedroom click shut for the night. She turned off the table lamp. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
She closed the shutters, reflecting on her own meager solitude as she did.
And that’s exactly when the window across the way lit up.
Deputy Chief of Police Angelo Garzo kept a mirror in one of his desk drawers. The functionary did this because he understood the importance of one’s image, and had built a substantial part of his career on his own.
Aside from his physical appearance, recently enhanced by a handsome thin mustache of which he was immensely proud, he believed that image depended largely on a certain status: a growing family, two thriving children and one on the way, a beautiful wife who was active in society and whose untarnished morality was absolutely unquestionable; the fact that she was also the niece of the Prefect of Salerno, whose own career was flourishing nicely, didn’t hurt. An almost maniacal cultivation of social relationships: there wasn’t an event, a performance, or a concert that didn’t see the deputy chief of police seated in the second row, beaming and gleaming in attire that was always just right for the occasion. The obsequious court he paid to the chief of police, whom he actually detested with every ounce of his being, and whose position he coveted, with discretion.
But more than anything else, his true strong point was an inborn ability to sense power relationships. He unfailingly chose the winning side of every barricade and emerged triumphant after each battle, but reliably and comfortably just behind the front line, so that he could always do an about-face, should the need arise, without doing harm to his career.
Having checked on the progress of his mustache the way a horticulturist would check on his orchids, he put the mirror away in its drawer and let his gaze roam around his office with a feeling of satisfaction. It looked like the study of a luxury apartment, so different from the other rooms at police headquarters. Furnished with leather-upholstered sofas and armchairs, as well as dark-walnut tables and chairs, bookshelves lined with untouched but handsome bordeaux-colored leather-bound volumes, which were perfectly coordinated with the overall color scheme. The walls lined with framed family pictures and medals, certificates, and diplomas, with photos of the Italian King and Il Duce in the prescribed places of honor.
He was well aware that he was no one’s idea of a good policeman, and yet he thought of himself as a useful and necessary link between the enforcers of law and order and the political institutions that he held in such great respect. He’d met many capable and responsible individuals on his way up the ranks, and he knew they were still right where he’d met them, spinning their wheels in the morass of small-time provincial police stations. His chief ability, the only one that was really necessary, was that of knowing how to treat his inferiors: the thornier the personality, the greater the merit in handling it.
With a sigh, he thought of Ricciardi. The finest of his colleagues: young, intelligent, capable. The most skillful when it came to solving mysteries, and the least diplomatic of them all. In the last three years he had often found himself mending rifts with prominent local figures whose toes the introverted commissario had stepped on; far more often, though, he had enjoyed praise for Ricciardi’s extraordinary successes. All things considered, they were perfectly suited to each other. All the commissario seemed to care about was investigating crimes and solving cases, whereas what mattered most to Garzo was recognition, reward, and the esteem of his superiors-and the less he was obliged to get the actual guano on his hands, the better.